Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

BrightEdge Awarded Patent for Operationalizing SEO

April 13, 2012 By Bill Hartzer

BrightEdge, a company that provides enterprise SEO, has been awarded its first patent issued by the United States Patent Office. The patent, #8,135,706, is titled “Operationalizing Search Engine Optimization,” and grants BrightEdge the ability to use its unique method for measuring share of voice in search engine rankings.

According to BrightEdge, “Share of voice is an innovation from BrightEdge that helps companies understand how their search rankings stack up against the competition. This unique and now patented capability allows companies to discover the entire competitive landscape for a group of keywords, what percentage of the keywords in the group they rank for, and the number of keywords for which they rank. This patented capability helps companies discover new competitors and create winning competitive SEO strategies.

The number and types of digital channels that a marketer can leverage to out-rank their competition has exploded. Beyond their web site, they can also leverage blogs, social media, video sharing, mobile content, and many other channels. Until now, business owners and designers of web pages had to guess their share of voice and relevance manually, without a proven system. The new patent bridges the knowledge gap between guessing and knowing who has the greatest share of voice in organic search, which is incredibly useful information for any SEO practitioner.”

Here is more info on the patent:

Abstract
A method for managing reference to an entity on a network includes determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms. The method also includes correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities. Thereafter, shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels may be correlated to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels. The relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels may then be displayed.

1. A method for managing references to an entity on a network, comprising: determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels; and displaying the relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining shares of voice includes retrieving search results associated with different geographic locations.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating shares of voice includes determining volatility of search results for the search terms.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising correlating shares of voice with historical changes in search signals.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the search terms are determined by a process including: determining a grouping for actions related to the entity, the grouping including a plurality of terms; searching the network for the terms associated with the grouping; and analyzing results of the searches to determine the rank positions for the entity within the results.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein analyzing the results of the searches includes crawling the results of the search.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising performing a keyword frequency analysis on the pages crawled during the crawling step.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising grouping keywords identified during the crawling step with the terms of the grouping.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein crawling the results of the search includes identifying page types of references within the search results.

11. A system for optimizing online references to an entity, the system comprising: a processor configured to execute computer instructions to cause the system to perform operations, the operations comprising: searching at least one channel on a network for references to the entity and other entities using a plurality of search terms to generate search results; scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to the entity and the other entities; correlating conversions by one or more visits to the entity with the search terms that directed the visits to the entity to determine a conversion rate; determining shares of voice for the entity and the other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to the plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities based on the scores for the references; and correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels based on the scores for the references.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein using a plurality of search terms to generate search results includes using a plurality of keywords.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein using a plurality of keywords further includes crawling previously returned search results and conducting a keyword frequency analysis to identify at least some of the plurality of keywords.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms includes determining a keyword rank.

16. The system of claim 11, further comprising scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; comparing the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the identify with the scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; and displaying the search terms, the competitive listings, and the scores for the references within the search results with respect to the competitive listings.

17. The system of claim 11, further comprising determining costs for improving the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the entity.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising determining values for improving the scores of the references within the search results associated with the search terms and selecting references to be improved based on determining the costs and values for improving the scoring of the references associated with the search terms.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising optimizing scores based on the steps of determining the costs and values for improving the scores of the references associated with the search terms.

20. The system of claim 11, further comprising performing a compliance analysis for the entity.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the compliance analysis includes defining rules for the entity, defining constructs for the entity, determining owners for the constructs, and applying the rules to the constructs to determine compliance of the constructs with the rules, wherein applying the rules is performed in a distributed network in the cloud.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein applying the rules includes applying the rules by way of a virtual private network.

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